Spiced Chicken with Onions and Peppers

I’ve moved into my new apartment in Providence, and I’m all ready to start culinary school tomorrow. I’ve got my chef jacket ironed, my silly checkered pants hemmed, and my name tag clipped on. Oh, and my extremely uncomfortable yet mandatory non-slip shoes. So I’m all set. What don’t I have? Oh…money. For a while my recipes will be mostly poor man’s food consisting of nothing fancy (not that I was all that fancy before) and probably many of the same ingredients. I’ll probably pretend I’m just giving good advice for budgeting!

I’ve been looking through my cookbooks and finding ways to cheapen up the good looking stuff. In one book I found a scrumptious looking chicken, but I didn’t have many of the spices, or anything that was in the side dish. Therefore I went with what I have! And what do I always have? That’s right, onions and peppers. They’re cheap and tasty and I can buy bags of them at a time. How delightful!

I’m going to save the cooking pics for the recipe, but I’ll warn you now they aren’t pretty. Good food rarely is pretty. I think tan, brown, and green are probably the tastiest, yet ugliest colors. I think you’ll live. To give you something pretty to go to when the ugly overwhelms, check out this lovely lighting fixture in my new kitchen!

The recipe itself doesn’t need much of an intro. It’s all relatively self explanatory, with pictures in case you’re confused. Good luck!

Heat oil in a large non-stick skillet. Cook onion and pepper on medium heat, adding a little salt to help soften. Cook until very tender. Will take at least 10 minutes.

Cooked, with spices added

Heat oven to 350

Mix spice rub ingredients in a small bowl.

I know you don’t need a pic for this, but the bowl was pretty

Thoroughly coat both sides of chicken breast. Any spice rub leftover can be immediately added to onions and peppers.

It’s gonna be tastier than it looks

Push onions and peppers to outsides of skillet to form a circle, and add a little more vegetable oil to the center. Place chicken in the center and cook on one side for 2 minutes, then flip and do the other side 2 more minutes.

Place pan in the oven and cook an addition 6 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through.